/m/soccer

Reader Comments and Retorts

Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.

Frank: That's what so sad/incredible..yup, Novara was in Serie A not long ago. Still 0-1 Varese.

Tyresö played in the women's Champions League final a couple of weeks ago, yesterday they withdrew from the Swedish league in the middle of the season. Though everybody knew that they were ###### economically since February or so.

Flip repost:
The espnfc site actually seems to have gotten a bit better since the last time I looked a couple of days ago. However, they claim to be displaying game times in ET, but the times listed are in PT (for me at least).

Grantland takes a stab at explaining soccer tactics. It mixes too many sports but its a decent enough try to explain the basics. They did miss an opportunity to link to MCoA's analysis in the "Shot Selection" part.

I think I might understand less about soccer having read it. Not the fault of the article, I don't think. I just apparently don't know anything about American football, so none of the analogies made any sense to me.

This is the worst spate of injuries to high profile players from "big" teams before a major tournament that I can remember, but I would love to see some data to back that up (given that guys get hurt every cycle).

I think the Grantland piece is a decent one for someone who knows the other sports but doesn't really know soccer. As Baldrick notes if you follow soccer it is just confusing but I often use other sports when explaining soccer to non-fan friends and it comes out a lot like that article.

I think the Grantland piece is a decent one for someone who knows the other sports but doesn't really know soccer.

Agreed. Like I said on the last page, it's not for people like us. It's for your friend who doesn't hate soccer and doesn't understand it but would like to get enough of an understanding to be able to watch the World Cup and have an idea of what is going on. Give them that link and they'll have a better understanding.

Germany was held by Armenia for the first half, and then Armenia let in a goal but managed to peg it back to 1-1. Then Germany created about five chances in three minutes and scored a couple of them. And it's a rout suddenly.

It seems that a lot of teams are playing fairly unimpressive soccer in these final friendlies. Is that uncommon? I was talking with a co-worker and intuitively it seems logical that teams would be a bit lethargic at this stage. The lack of motivation plus a desire to avoid injury would make them play at a fairly pedestrian pace. And of course with the 23 man rosters announced there is relatively little to fight for at this stage.

I've just about got my World Cup model up and running, and I'll be writing a whole bunch for the WaPo Fancy Stats blog starting, well, today.

My dark horse picks right now are Portugal and France (if France counts). Obviously with Portugal it's dependent on Ronaldo's health. I don't think Ribery is that big a loss when France can just stick Antoine Griezmann into his role. France is to wide forwards what Argentina is to center forwards. Portugal were the big expected goals underperformer in European qualifying. By xG they should have gone 9-1-0 and romped into the Cup.

And I've been working on some tactical statistics for football, trying to quantify how much a team focuses their attacks on breaking through the center or crossing from the flanks, and how "direct" they are in building attacks. Also looking at opposition pass completion rates, by location on the pitch, to gauge the effectiveness of defensive presses. I wrote on Mauricio Pochettino using those stats, and today I've got a piece on the radically cross-happy US Men's team.

I don't think crossing is necessarily bad--Atleti use a mixed attack, so do Croatia. Sometimes that's what your talent can do best. But the EPL sides in the US' range in Cross:TB ratio are your Hulls, West Hams and Crytals Palace. It's a weapon of the weak, and it suggests that even in CONCACAF Klinsmann wasn't confident in his team's ability to break down defenses with technical skill and the passing game.

The espnfc site actually seems to have gotten a bit better since the last time I looked a couple of days ago. However, they claim to be displaying game times in ET, but the times listed are in PT (for me at least).

They still had the Ghana/Guatemala game listed, though it has been cancelled for 2 months.

MCoA, good stuff, though I would argue that post-Eusebio Portugal have a long history of being crap at converting chances (ask any Portuguese fan you come across), and that Cristiano generally cannot both create and finish himself.

I think deferring to a team's stars is more like a "the entire world except Germany and Holland" thing.

Johan Cryuff might disagree. Of course, the Dutch teams are seemingly always in open warfare, which is what makes me root for them. I'm sure it's been done to death in here, but Winner's Brilliant Orange is required re-reading for me before any international tournament that the Dutch are in.

Wonderful pass from Altidore there to find Dempsey on the counter. Wasn't really ever going to amount to anything, but I really like seeing him try stuff like that. Is it too simple to say that the goal has lifted his spirits?

Nigeria has looked mostly uninspired in friendlies so far, and today is another example. I wonder if they'll be able to turn it on for the actual games. They did look a little better in the second half of their game against Greece.

Appiah’s biggest problem is at full-back. His best left-back is a right-back by trade who spends his regular season playing in midfield at Esperance, Harrison Afful, while his other options, Samuel Inkoom and Daniel Opare are nothing if not inconsistent.

I remember that Samuel Inkoom guy from the last World Cup. He now plays for Dnipro, aka Shakhtar Donetsk Jr., and they keep sending him out on loan.

Taylor Twellman is going to drive me crazy. It took him 25 minutes to figure out that Jones was not "sitting in front of the back 4" along with Beckerman.

I would have guessed this from the first whistle. Klinsmann so far hasn't wanted to play with 2 players in that spot, Jones hasn't been able to handle it alone, and Jones is better roaming forward (and attacking the ball further from the back line) more anyway. And, of course, Klinsmann won't write out a lineup without Jones's name in it. This is an interesting compromise to play this way, but I'll leave it to others to say how effective it might be.

More false than actual because Nigeria is the poor man's Ghana. As Aunt Bea says, Nigeria isn't taking to the US. And that's not because the US is doing a great job defensively (but they're not playing bad either). There are certainly good things to build on.

Omar Gonzalez seemed like a new Onyewu in most of the qualifying games. Was I off base back then, or was it just that we were up against a bunch of Central Americans who are all 8 inches shorter than him?

The commentators (it was Twellman and Darke, right?) were falling over themselves praising the Dempsey/Bradley connection, which I think was overstated but has a grain of truth to it. A lot of the nice attacking moves did feature those two, and Dempsey was involved in three or four plays that could very easily have produced goals.

Obviously, if we're going to really do well, a more impressive all-around performance from Dempsey would be really helpful. But there are just very few ways this team is going to score a goal, and Dempsey is one of the best chances there. He scores a lot of garbage goals, but they all count the same. And our other options won't score 'em like he will. I don't really see any way he can be dropped.

Dempsey is the US most dangerous player (with or without Donovan). However, for some reason he gets the Cristiano Ronaldo treatment from Klinsmann. If he's going to look uninterested as he did today, then might as well put in Evans or Zusi - at least they'll work hard, especially if Jozy can score some goals.

FIFA's decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar came under further scrutiny as The Sunday Times published new allegations that Mohamed Bin Hammam used his wealth and top level contacts to buy support for the oil-rich country's successful bid.

The newspaper, which last week claimed that the former FIFA Executive Committee member made payments totaling $5 million to senior football officials to seal support for Qatar, also accused Bin Hammam of using $1.7 million to secure key Asian votes.

It alleged that Bin Hammam arranged government level talks for Thailand's FIFA executive Worawi Makudi to discuss a gas sale "potentially worth tens of millions of dollars to Thailand'' and that he was invited to visit Vladimir Putin before Russia and Qatar's victories in the votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Tbh, though, I can't see our offense threatening Portugal much at this rate. We're devoting a lot of resources to defense. Oh well, cross that bridge if we get there.

i'm not a fan, and i don't follow this stuff at all, but i think the plan in brazil will/should be to run up the score against uganda, and then play for a tie against germany and portugal in the hope that you advance on GD. that's kind of a cheap way to play it, but it's not like anyone who follows/plays soccer seems to care about that kind of thing.

of course that plan immediately goes to #### if germany/portugal tie in game 1 or if you lose to whoever lost that game, but whichever way it winds up going, putting up 3 or 4 against uganda won't hurt you.

I would be absolutely thrilled with 5 points from this group, even if the US failed to advance with 5 (it's always very unlikely to be eliminated with 5 or 6 points in the group). It won't be easy to run up the score on Ghana (any type of win would be huge), and Ghana has a decent chance to draw with one of the other two teams in the group anyway.

Since the World Cup moved to its current format with 8 groups of 4, top 2 advancing in each group (1998), no team achieving 5 (or 6) points in group play has been eliminated. The last time this could have arisen was back in 1994, when all 3 of Nigeria, Bulgaria, and Argentina advanced with 6 points (there were only 6 groups back then, so 3 teams advanced out of some groups). In that same year, a group did manage to finish with all 4 teams having 4 points exactly (much to my continued amusement back then). Mexico, Ireland, Italy, and Norway, with only Norway eliminated on total goals scored. (Yes, all 4 teams did also manage to have the same goal differential of 0, which is not that surprising when you consider that there were only 3 games with victories, and each with a 1 goal margin.)

Edit: in 1994, another group also finished with 3 teams on 6 points, all 3 advancing: Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, and Belgium, with Morocco the eliminated team.